Tag Archives: AMPP

I love a good master/slave story and I found this one particularly interesting as it is set outside the typical fantasy world setting. We are in New York in a world we recognize, just a modified version. So I found the set up fascinating here and it makes for a really engaging story.

and

So overall I was just thrilled with this story and love the world Glass has created. I adored Henry and Martin together. They are sweet and adorable and also manage to be super sexy together. I loved the 1900s setting and the alternate world Glass has created. I am already dying to start the second book and see what comes next for these two. So A Most Personal Property is really excellent and highly recommended.

And about A Superior Slave (GQ 0.5)she says:

I found this one so good and just fascinating and it is wonderful set up to the larger series…It is a long, almost novel length story and a great introduction to the world Glass has created here. I adore Martin and just loved seeing this look into his world.

Share this:

Like this:

Toward the end of A Most Personal Property, Henry and Martin have a conversation about what sorts of dirty stories they’ve read. Henry tells Martin about the excerpts James read him from Psychopathia Sexualis, and Martin relates the following:

“Oh, there was a book, Sir, that we all read in secret, though our teachers must have known we had it. I don’t know what it was called because the cover was missing—as were some of the pages, for that matter. It was very dirty, Sir! It was from England, I think, as some of the words were different than we use, and it was about a family who all had sex with one another, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews. I know that feeling you referred to, Sir, excited and sick. You don’t want to like it, but you do, in some deep way, and your prick responds just as it would to something you really want.”

There is an actual book I had in mind when Martin gives that description, and thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read it, too:

It has more than its share of title, as you can see. It is perverse and ridiculous. It contains pedophilia, incest, rape, florid language, and the term “fucker” used as an endearment, and it is absolutely the sort of thing a bunch of teenage Victorians would furtively pass around their dormitory.

There’s actually a lot of Victorian porn available online, and I read quite a bit of it trying to find just the right story for Martin and his friends. Honestly, though, I think they’d have been happy with anything, and that description would fit about half the Victorian porn out there anyway (they were really into incest!). Regardless, it made me happy to have a specific book in mind when writing the scene.

I’m thrilled with the whole thing, but was especially pleased that I passed muster on these fronts:

Two things stood out as outstanding were the level of research that clearly was put into bringing 1900 NYC to life i.e. the language, the clothing, the class distinctions, the rituals. I appreciate research and Ms. Glass obviously did hers and I applaud her for it. The second was the character development. Henry and even his friends were so real I felt as though I were tagging along with them on their trips to the park and cycling and going to the arcade. Everything about Henry felt so authentic and genuine that I was honestly surprised to discover that this author was female. Bravo.

Share this:

Like this:

In writing a turn-of-the century story, I wanted to include as much detail from the period as was practical, to give the characters a real world to live in. Young people in New York in 1900 would definitely have gone to the shore and visited the amusement park. Steeplechase Park opened in 1897 and more or less created the template for all the amusement parks that would follow.

The steeplechase ride the boys go on in A Most Personal Property looks fun and exhilarating, but it also seems very possible for people to just fall off the horses and break their necks.

The steeplechase ride was definitely in place in 1900, but I can be less sure about Blowhole Theater. References indicate that some version of it was always part of the steeplechase ride, so I chose to include it. The video is quite obviously from the mid-1920s, but you certainly get the idea!

Verisimilitude note: Today, the season at Coney Island ends at Halloween, and I have it ending in October in the book. However, it’s likely that in 1900 the season actually ended in September. I really wanted to send them to an amusement park, but it just wouldn’t have worked in the September timeline, so I used the modern schedule.

Like this:

Martin is working on a piece of music throughout the GQ series and I never name it, but I definitely had a specific piece in mind. I am not deeply knowledgeable about classical music or musicians, but I know what I like, and I absolutely love the Bach partitas and sonatas for solo violin, especially Partita No. 2 in D Minor and its challenging chaconne.

I have recordings of these works by a variety of musicians, and originally the version of the chaconne I had in mind for Martin was by Lara St. John, a favorite of long standing. I searched on YouTube to find video of her or anyone else playing the chaconne, and I came across this:

I’d never heard of James Ehnes. With his brown suit and conservative haircut, he looked more like an insurance salesman than an artist to my critical eye. My expectations were low when I hit play.

OH MY GOD. Plaintive, sobbing notes full of longing, played with precision. It is more than a little sexy to me! Every time I listen to this (and I listen to it a lot), at the 6:30 mark I always have to actually stop what I’m doing and watch him play.

Mr. Ehnes performed with the symphony here last year, although unfortunately he didn’t play Bach. But I took binoculars so I could watch his hands and was as excited as a tween at a One Direction concert. I’ve got his studio recordings of both this Bach and the Elgar I actually saw him play, and while the recordings are beautiful and among my favorites, I think he’s a performer whose playing becomes much more expressive and impressive in the presence of an audience.

Anyway, I am definitely not claiming that Martin would play this terribly difficult piece nearly this well, but only that this is what he would have in his head; this would be the ideal version he would be attempting to match or surpass when he practiced the piece.

Like this:

My dear Leta Blake asked me to answer a few questions about the Ganymede Quartet books over at her blog. I tell her where I got the idea to write slaves in the 20th century and talk a little about the research I did to make the rest of the story as believable as possible.

Share this:

Like this:

Print proof – an actual book! made of paper! – in the midst of the detritus of my desk.

Now, realistically, there are just a tiny handful of people who love me especially well who will even consider buying a physical copy, but I’m thrilled that it exists!

The print version of A Most Personal Property has A Superior Slave included as an extra in the back. Because ASS is a free story, I never planned to do a separate print version of it, but I thought it would be nice to bundle it with AMPP.

(Seriously, if I’d been thinking straight, I never would have named a book something that would result in an acronym like ASS!)

Share this:

Like this:

A Most Personal Property (Ganymede Quartet Book 1) is available for preorder at Amazon for download on September 24.

Here is the first of the main series books in the Ganymede Quartet.

Blurb:

In the heat of August 1900, Henry Blackwell—rich, handsome, and painfully shy—anticipates the purchase of his companion slave, that most personal of properties, with equal parts excitement and dread. There are limits to what a gentleman might do with his slave and still remain a gentleman, and what Henry craves goes far beyond what’s allowed.

Martin, a slave from House Ganymede, is the most beautiful young man Henry’s ever seen, and he’s ready and willing to do as Henry commands, but Henry’s afraid to ask him for what he really needs. A master needn’t care what a slave thinks or how he feels, but Henry can’t help wanting Martin to like him anyway. If Henry could be certain Martin wanted the same things he does, he might be bold enough to reveal his secrets.

Unfolding against a backdrop of progress, privilege and turn-of-the-century amusements, the four installments of the Ganymede Quartet present an erotic coming-of-age fantasy of Gilded Age New York in which young men from the richest families form intense bonds with the slaves who serve them.

Excerpt:

After breakfast, outside in the cool of the morning, waiting for the carriage to be brought around, Henry was full of nervous energy and stood bouncing on his toes. Father looked Henry up and down and frowned; perhaps the green suit had been a bad idea—Father disapproved of what he saw as Henry’s dandyish notions. But nothing was said, and in any event it was too late to change. Jack drove up in the Clarence and Henry climbed in after his father to sit on the rear-facing seat while Timothy sat at Father’s side. Henry’s stomach was in knots and his hands twisted and fidgeted in his lap. Father champed on a cigar and looked sharply at Henry’s twitching fingers until Henry realized what he was doing and forced himself to stop.

As the carriage began to roll, Father cleared his throat in preparation to speak, and Henry sat up self-consciously straight in order to hear him. “About today, Henry…it’s important to choose the right slave for the job, son,” Father began. “Especially important when it comes to the companion slave. It can’t just be a pretty face, you understand.”

Father paused here, a long pause before Henry recognized a response was required and hurriedly said, “Yes, sir.”

“You want a slave who’s clever and shows initiative, of course, but not one who’s going to challenge your authority. He’ll be with you for the rest of your life, so of course he must be someone whose company you’ll enjoy. You’ll necessarily be close, but you must never allow your slave to feel that he is your equal, Henry. You must never allow him to be overly familiar with you or make a joke at your expense.” Again, Father waited for Henry to respond.

Henry cleared his throat. “Of course not, sir.”

“Boys your age…I know there are, er, certain aspects of ownership that you’re particularly interested in,” Father said, reddening and fixing his gaze at a point somewhere beyond Henry’s left ear. “That’s to be expected, but there are limits, and you must work within them. There are…certain intimacies that must be avoided.” Father cleared his throat and looked away. “Kissing is reserved for the marriage bed, no matter how caught up in the moment one may be.”

Henry flushed a horrified red. “Father! I know this!”

But Father had apparently prepared a speech and was going to get through it. “There is nothing improper in a slave deriving pleasure from performing his duties, but a master must never do anything toward satisfying a slave’s needs. It may be an intimate relationship, son, but it is not a romantic one.”

“I understand, sir,” Henry mumbled, head down, eyes averted, cheeks burning. He felt he could sink through the floor of the carriage.

Father turned to Timothy, seeming relieved that the uncomfortable portion of his talk was over. “Tell him what you think, Timothy. What should he be looking for today?”

Timothy gave Henry a mild-mannered smile. “Well, Sir, most important, I think, is that we choose a boy who appeals to you. Someone whose looks appeal, someone with similar interests. All of the candidates will be of exceptional quality, well-educated and of good temperament, or they wouldn’t be offered as companions.”

“We’ll go to Ganymede, of course,” Father said. “We’ll have to see what the others are offering, I suppose, but every male slave in our household thus far has come from Ganymede.” Father patted Timothy’s arm. “I have no complaints.” Timothy gave Father a fond smile.

For a long time, Henry had been squeamish about the idea of his father and Timothy being…together. Father was so fat and florid, and Timothy was so proper and mouse-gray, and the few photographs he’d seen of them as younger men didn’t make the idea any more palatable. However, Henry had recently learned that Father didn’t buy Timothy until he was in his twenties, a grown man. Father had been born into poverty, and it wasn’t until he had made a great success of himself that he’d been able to afford to have quality people around him. So it was possible, even likely, that Father and Timothy had never had an intimate physical relationship. Henry did believe, though, that Timothy was his father’s closest friend, despite what everyone said about slaves not being real friends.